CFP: [Graduate] CFP: 2009 Graduate Conference at Boston College

Page, Stage, and Beyond: Perspectives on Performance and Theatricality

Boston College is pleased to announce its Second Biennial English GraduateConference, â€œPage, Stage, and Beyond: Perspectives on Performance andTheatricalityâ€, to be held on 28 March 2009. Our keynote speaker for theevent will be Prof. Martin Puchner of Columbia University. He has publishedwidely on theater, philosophy, and modernism, and his most recent book,Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes(Princeton, 2006), was recently awarded the MLAâ€™s James Russell Lowell Prize.Drawing on Antonin Artaudâ€™s description of theater as something â€œwhich isin no thing, but which makes use of everythingâ€, we are looking fororiginal, thought-provoking 15-minute presentations that explore thedynamic nature of performance and theatricality. We invite papers that notonly examine performance and theater but also deal with the way performanceand theatricality are represented across time, place, and variousgenresâ€"including traditional staged performance; performance and visualart; live and recorded music; film, television, video, and the Internet;prose and poetry; and rituals, ceremonies, and monuments. We invitesurprises and strongly encourage scholars to broadly define the nature oftheater and performance. At the same time, we welcome individualsubmissions that offer a fresh focus on a text(s) through a critical lensprovided by canonical theorists such as Joseph Roach, Judith Butler, LauraMulvey, and Stephen Greenblatt. An ideal submission would explore one ormore of the following questions:â€¢ How do the performative and theatrical elements of speech acts functionin politics and society? In what ways is acting always â€œacting outâ€?â€¢ How does performance implicate its audience? What is the role andresponsibility of the spectator?â€¢ What are the possibilities or pitfalls of using theatricality as ametaphor to bridge historical and literary studies?â€¢ How is performance affected by its means of transmissionâ€"whether bystage, print, manuscript, video, or cultural phenomenon?â€¢ How are performance and theatricality manifested in everyday life? How doquotidian acts elevate themselves to ritual, ceremony, and rite?